Web Warriors #6: "Nobody Knows Nothing"

[superboyprime]

"The story of Spider-Man is a person who, despite having a lot of problems he can barely manage, tries to be better because he knows he has to be. He’s our best self. It’s an indestructible concept, because it’s fundamentally honest." - Mike Costa

Comments

[long_silence]

Why does Meera Jain look so... different?

[lieut_kettch]

I'm guessing she dyed her hair? Or Franklin Richards put reassembled her wrong.

But yeah, this is how she's supposed to look like:

[redmagpie]

This comic has been whitewashing like crazy. Anya gets it too. She has blue eyes now.

[yvonmukluk]

You don't need to come up with a diagetic explanation, when the answer is 'the artist didn't bother to do any research past "Mary Jane anlogue", so drew her as Basically Mary Jane'.

[cainofdreaming]

Spider-Ham could really play a more important role amidst all these malnourished kids.

I'm just saying.

[thezmage]

Wait, how is it that those two are lost when they're literally right where the others last left them?

[long_silence]

Interference from the Electros trying to escape and the damage to the Web they use to jump to other realities has made returning to Lady Spider's world impossible, they just can't find it.

[yvonmukluk]

Or they could maybe ask one of the other multiversal groups for assistance. The Captain Britain Corps is back, right? And Billy is a member. Or just find a universe with a Reed Richards and ask HIM for help.

Of course, that'd violate the unwritten (or, you know, it's might well be written) 'this is about Spider-Characters and ONLY Spider-Characters' rule, which seems like the death knell for a book based around an infinite multiverse. Exiles was at least nominally about the X-Men, but they were willing to branch out and examine other aspects of Marvel continuity - plus there's a lot more varied material there. Spider-Man is not a franchise that lends itself very well to multiverse-hopping, since it is a street-level story. All of the Web Warriors have nearly identical powers - that's not a way to have a particularly interesting story, either visually or narratively.

[laughing_tree]

That's more like an unwritten rule for superhero comics in general. The Fantastic Four never called anyone for help when Galactus showed up

[bizarrohulk]

But Spider-Man breaks that rule all the time. Characters like Daredevil, Human Torch, Dr Strange, etc. show up in his books frequently. That's why it'd so odd that apparently only Spider-characters are allowed to play in this one.

[laughing_tree]

For every story where that happens, there's one where his problems could have been much more easily solved if he'd just used his Rolodex, even if it's just a case of "He need to track down so-and-so, so why doesn't he just ask a telepath ally to scan for them?"

[yvonmukluk]

Yeah, especially since i think they all have more or less the same power set. The only exception I think is Mayday, and her additional powers of 'stick other people to the same surface as her' and 'can also use her stick 'em powers to launch herself off surfaces/launch stuff she's stuck to away' aren't terribly exciting and I think it was forgotten even in her own book.

Having a team that are all variations on the exact same theme are kind of boring. Look at the exiles - they had a whole mix of different powers and skill sets.

They're stuck fighting just Spider-Man villains (or variations thereof - with the exceptino of Ducktor Doom 2099, but I think he's rather an outlier because I cant see how they could animalise any other of Spidey 2099's villains and also have them be enough of a threat to necessitate calling in the Spider-Exiles). Never mind one of the most iconic Spider-Man stories has him fighting an X-Men villain.

Web Warriors rather reminds me of that joke arc of Exiles where there was a team of all Wolverines, except they play it straight and never addressing 'hey, having a team of variants of the same guy/powerset is kind of dumb'. We have Octavia from Upside-Down World, but that's about it.

It's kind of the problem with Spider-Verse (the original story). The resolution was more-or-less throw more spider-Men at the problem', at least till Deus Ex Leopardon. Peter KNEW, right form the star, about the radiation weakness, so logically he should have told them to gather every Hazmat/Firestar/Radioactive Man. I know, I know, it was billed as 'every Spider-man ever', but if the story needs the hero to withhold obvious information to justify its premise, it's a bad story.

[laughing_tree]

"Having a team that are all variations on the exact same theme are kind of boring."

Oh, I dunno, I think it's been handled successfully a time or two. ;)

[thezmage]

This is always weird to me. Batman regularly has crossovers featuring 5-10 characters whose powers are all "fights good," but more than one spider-person and everyone goes crazy.

[yvonmukluk]

Well, first off, I'm not even going to bother arguing against that first example, since that team only lasted 19 issues and has only had cameo appearances since. Not exactly a long runner (but hey, they might outlast Web Warriors, so there's that).

The Marvel family is very much the exception that proves the rule. And they often had solo adventures. Much as I love the Marvel Family, I don't think they would really fit.

The GLC? Considering how the very nature of the ring's powers, I'd argue that doesn't particularly count, since two people can use the rings in very different ways to solve the same problem. Unless you're saying all Lanterns use their powers just to shoot lasers. And they usually (at least when they show up as a team) are literally fighting their palette-swapped counterparts.

Team Arrow? I know pretty much nothing about them, other than they're often compared unfavourably to the Batfamily. Since I don't know about them, I'll just talk about the Batfamily instead, since the other comment also brought them up. The Batfamily don't have powers. They have skills, and different members have different skillsets. Tim is the detective. Jason is the one who knows the underworld. Cassandra is the fighter who can beat anyone, even Batman. They tend to also fight different (Tim has the staff, Nightwing has his Escrima sticks, Steph her electro-magna-gooperangs). They're going to fight differently.

The Web Warriors? It's spider-acrobatics to not get hit, and then punch or web as appropiate.

[laughing_tree]

You could say the same thing about the Web Warriors and their skills. Pavitr's the science genius, Billy's the strategist, Lady Reilly uses gadgets, Noir is a detective - sort of, Ham defies physics, etc.

[matrix_dragon]

Okay, who are you, and what have you done with the real Mike Costa? I'm not complaining, but man, this is much better than some of your other works.

[shakalooloo]

I guess he finds multiverse-hopping spider-powered superheroes more relatable than anthropomorphised giant robots. :/

[matrix_dragon]

I was thinking more of God is Dead, although Transformers really wasn't his finest hour either.

[cypherfdp]

Prospects are not looking good for Leopardon.

[thosefew]

She's the dummer, huh? So she plays the dum?

[cygnia]

Does Sony have the rights to all the Spider-Men or just Peter Parker? 'Cause if it's the latter, can we get a MCU/Bollywood version of Spider-Man:India?

[kalanyr]

The licenses are generally for properties not characters, so they'd get everything associated with Spiderman and maybe a veto on characters from Spiderman that ended up associated with eg the Avengers instead depending on how the contract was written.

Justice League Unlimited for screwed that way since some Legion of Doom members are Batman villains and Batman is nearly always licensed to someone.

[laughing_tree]

I'm curious how this sort of thing works. By what standard, for example, does Silver Surfer get considered part of Fox's Fantastic Four package but the Inhumans don't?

Actually, I remember once hearing a guy who works extensively in the tie-in novel industry say that you'd be surprised how vague the language of most rights-granting contracts are, at least when it comes to defining these boundaries. It's not so much carefully delineated as something that he has to hash out over the phone with rights-holders *after* the contracts have already been signed.

[bizarrohulk]

Case in point - Quicksilver.

That cover...

[glprime]

Um, wasn't Peter Porker eating ham back when the Web Warriors first met up in the original crossover? It freaked out somebody as cannibalism and he explained how it wasn't? Yup, that did happen.

Re: That cover...

[yvonmukluk]

They don't tell the cover artist anything. He didn't even know Mayday was in the book at first (hence why she hasn't appeared on a single cover; by the time he learned - from a fan, apparently - she was already off the team).

Re: That cover...

[malitia]

Spider-Ham's relationship with pork products (and sandwiches, and food in general) is still a running gag in the comic.